Crystal Lake neurologist never charged with crime, but license was suspended last year

Robert McCoppin, Chicago Tribune

A doctor in Crystal Lake is suing three former patients for defamation over their allegations that he fondled them in his office.

Dr. Mahesh Parikh, a neurologist, had his medical license suspended indefinitely last year as a result of the claims. But he has denied any misconduct and is seeking to have his license reinstated.

His attorney said that since Parikh was stripped of his ability to practice medicine, his reputation has been harmed, he has lost his annual income of $1 million and his home is in foreclosure.

The doctor filed separate defamation lawsuits this month against three former patients and the mother of one of the patients. That woman, who testified against Parikh at regulatory hearings leading to his suspension, said she was taken aback that the lawsuits publicly name the three alleged victims.

“This is an appalling action by a remorseless individual who is trying to intimidate those who would testify against him,” the mother wrote in an email. The Tribune is not naming her or the patients to protect the identities of the three alleged victims of sexual misconduct.

Parikh’s attorney, Rishi Agrawal, said he would file an amended suit that will identify the patients by initials only, calling it a “more appropriate” way to handle the unusual case, but said the baseless allegations against Parikh justified the lawsuits.

“We’re trying to right this wrong for this man who has contributed so much to the community,” Agrawal said. “We’re trying to get him back to practicing medicine.”

In response to an inquiry about Parikh’s lawsuits, Susan Hofer, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, noted that the Medical Practice Act “specifically prohibits breaching patient confidentiality,” and protects people from civil liability if they contact regulators under the act.

Disclosing a patient’s name, without disclosing protected health information, is not generally a violation of federal law, said Joel Shalowitz, director of health industry management at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. But that doesn’t make the lawsuit a good idea in his eyes.

“By making this a very prominent case, (the doctor is) probably making a strategic error in trying to restore his reputation,” said Shalowitz, adding that he had never heard of a similar suit by a doctor against a patient. “If he gets his license back nobody will know, but if he sues, it’s news, and his name will be all over the place.”

The case that led to Parikh losing his license involved a college-age woman who saw him on multiple occasions in 2008 and 2009 to treat migraine headaches and other ailments, according to her testimony at a disciplinary hearing for the doctor.

When the patient complained of breast tenderness, she testified, the doctor said it was a side effect of a drug he had prescribed for her, and he touched her breasts on repeated visits. During later visits, she claimed, he touched her vaginal area under her clothes.

The patient testified that she felt uncomfortable but assumed the doctor was doing what was medically necessary. A state’s expert involved in the disciplinary hearing said there was no medical reason for such exams.

Police also investigated the young woman’s claims, though Parikh was not charged with a crime. Neither Crystal Lake police nor McHenry County prosecutors could be reached for comment on the case. The woman’s mother said authorities told her they lacked evidence to pursue the case.

Parikh was, however, the subject of a disciplinary hearing to determine whether he violated the state Medical Practice Act. An administrative law judge found that the state failed to prove any violation. The judge questioned the young woman’s credibility, saying that her naivete about her treatment didn’t seem to match her age and experience.

The Illinois Medical Disciplinary Board agreed with those findings but was overruled by the state Division of Professional Regulation.

Jay Stewart, director of the division, wrote that Parikh engaged in “unethical” and “immoral” misconduct.

The state’s investigation determined that the doctor “took advantage of an innocent and naive patient over a period of six months,” Stewart wrote. “This was not a brief lapse of judgment or an isolated incident.”

According to his legal filings, Parikh learned from state regulators after his license was suspended that two other women had come forward with claims they had been “touched inappropriately in a sexual manner” while they were patients of Parikh’s. Those two women are among the four he is suing.

One of the women, reached Monday at her home in the northwest suburbs, said she saw Parikh about 25 years ago to treat leg numbness after a car crash.

Parikh’s suit against the woman states that she made “false statements when she falsely accused Dr. Parikh of sexual misconduct in course of being treated by Dr. Parikh.”

She was too embarrassed to tell anyone besides her family and close friends, she said. But when she saw a newspaper account of the most recent allegations against Parikh last year, she said she wanted to back up the patient’s story, and called Crystal Lake police.

She said they referred her to the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, where she filed a statement.

“I hate to see him do it to somebody else,” she said.

Through his attorney and his lawsuit against the woman, Parikh stated that he was notified of the woman’s complaint in April but denied the incident took place.

Parikh is seeking reinstatement of his license at a hearing this fall and wants an injunction to bar the four defendants from making further statements against him. He also is seeking at least $5 million in damages from each defendant.

Medical malpractice suits are common (even if they are not as common as some doctors fear). But a suit by a doctor against a patient? That would seem to fit the ancient definition of news. Yet I hadn’t heard of Dr. David McKee’s defamation suit against Dennis Laurion before I received an email about the case.

Actually, Dennis Laurion was not McKee’s patient. Dr. McKee, a neurologist, treated Dennis’s father, Kenneth, a World War II vet, who suffered a hemorrhagic stroke in April 2010. The younger Mr. Laurion was not at all happy with how Dr. McKee treated his father. The elder Mr. Laurion survived, but his son felt that Dr. McKee failed to accord his father appropriate dignity and respect. He didn’t sue for malpractice; instead, he blasted the doctor on a number of ratings sites.

There are ratings services for every business and profession out here on the Internet (including sites that rate lawyers). I haven’t used the Internet to check out a doctor since… let’s see… yesterday. Usually, though, I’m only looking for confirmation of the spelling of the doctor’s name, or to verify an address or phone number. I personally don’t put much stock in so-called “reviews.” On any random site, some reviews will seem as if they’d been written by the doctor’s mother. Others read as if they’d been written by the doctor’s bitter ex-spouse.

Nevertheless (and understandably), doctors are a bit sensitive about how they are portrayed online. See, “Why doctors hate online reviews,” by Dr. Rahul Parikh, in the “Pop Rx” column on Salon.com, September 5, 2011.

There are services that promise to provide some protection to the small businessperson who suffers the slings and arrows of outrageous Internet attacks. Reputation Defender is one product that advertises heavily in this market (and the website seems to pitch at doctors in particular); TheReviewBuster.com is another one I found in a quick search today. Public relations firms would, presumably, be able to offer some assistance to the aggrieved professional in straits similar to those in which Dr. McKee apparently found himself.

But Dr. McKee decided to sue instead.

The trial court entered summary judgment against McKee. The various sources I’ve consulted today dispute whether Dennis Laurion voluntarily removed his comments from ratings sites when Dr. McKee asked. Depending on the point of view of the poster, McKee’s suit was either an honorable response to vicious online attacks or a callous attempt to stifle the Laurion family’s free speech rights. And there may have been a SLAPP angle, too: In addition to posting negative reviews, Dennis Laurion made a complaint to the hospital where Dr. McKee worked and to the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice. Supposedly, just before the summary judgment motion was resolved against McKee, a hundred new negative reviews appeared on line about Dr. McKee. McKee’s lawyer blamed Laurion; Laurion denied it. I have to wonder whether these additional postings might have been a product of the Streisand Effect.

In the course of today’s efforts, I do not claim to have peeled through the many layers of conflicting opinion to reveal any hard kernel of truth about this case. The headline on this post, however, “Doctor sues patient’s family — and everybody loses” (HealthExecNews.com, May 10, 2011), struck me as probably accurate. I can report that McKee’s appeal is scheduled for a hearing before the Minnesota Court of Appeals, in Duluth, on November 10.

Not knowing the actual facts and being unschooled in Minnesota law (and being unlicensed in that state), I venture no prediction about the outcome of the doctor’s appeal.

But the question arises how a similar suit might fare in Illinois. Would our Citizen Participation Act (735 ILCS §110/1 et seq.) apply? Shoreline Towers Condominium Association v. Gassman, 404 Ill.App.3d 1013, 936 N.E.2d 1198 (1st Dist. 2010), may provide some guidance. Ms. Gassman kept installing a mezuzah outside the front door of her condominium; the homeowners’ association kept taking it down, insisting it was prohibited by a policy that prohibited “[m]ats, boots, shoes, carts or objects of any sort… outside Unit doors.” Gassman, a lawyer, initiated a raft of lawsuits and religious discrimination complaints with a number of state agencies, challenging the association’s ban.

The association changed its policy. And, for good measure, the City of Chicago passed an ordinance and the State of Illinois passed a law prohibiting others from attempting similar bans.

But relations between Gassman and the Association had soured in the meantime to the point where all sorts of accusations were made by one side and the other. Ultimately the Association filed a 10-count complaint against Gassman alleging a variety of theories. Gassman moved to dismiss all counts under the Citizen Participation Act (or, as it also sometimes called, the anti-SLAPP Act). The trial court agreed that the Act applied to some, but not all of the counts.

On appeal, the Association argued that the Act shouldn’t have applied to any of its claims (404 Ill.App.3d at 1020): Shoreline argues that SLAPP suits are “lawsuits brought to silence public outcry regarding issues of significant public concern,” and it characterizes SLAPP suits as actions brought against “a person or group [who] was using a public forum to voice an opinion regarding a public issue.” It suggests that “[i]t could hardly be argued that [Gassman’s] campaign of defamation, tortious interference, harassment, intimidation, and personal attacks, as to the affairs of a private condominium association, and against the members of the Board personally, rises to the level of an ongoing attempt to petition a governmental entity for public redress.”

But the Appellate Court disagreed (404 Ill.App.3d at 1021-22):

[T]he Act does not protect only public outcry regarding matters of significant public concern, nor does it require the use of a public forum in order for a citizen to be protected. Rather, it protects from liability all constitutional forms of expression and participation in pursuit of favorable government action.

To the extent, then, that our hypothetical Illinois doctor’s suit might be seen as retaliation for complaints to licensing authorities, my suspicion is that an Illinois court might find that the anti-SLAPP statute applicable. Maybe.

But the anti-SLAPP statute provides no license for Internet trolls out to sabotage a professional’s reputation.